In The Line Of Film: The Secret Service Meets Hollywood

July 27, 1997|By Gary Dretzka, Tribune Staff Writer.

HOLLYWOOD — Talk about an image problem. Here's how one longtime Secret Service agent describes this town's cliched vision of his former profession.

"In `Taxi Driver' and other films, we were portrayed as monosyllabic idiots who can't complete a full sentence and stand on corners with dark glasses," says Robert R. Snow, who retired from the agency in 1993, at 60, and now is paid to make sure Hollywood gets things right. "Until `In the Line of Fire,' there was nothing to show what the Secret Service really did."

Things have changed.

In movies such as "Guarding Tess" and "First Kid," agents have been given comic personas. Then, in this year's "Murder at 1600," "Absolute Power" and "Air Force One," they take a sinister turn.

"We feel we're working our way up in the world," quipped Snow. "In `Absolute Power,' we had two bad agents. In `Air Force One,' we're down to one."

Snow, who commutes to Hollywood from his home in suburban Washington, is very much in demand these days. The White House has become an almost routine setting for intrigue, sexual shenanigans, even alien encounters, and directors have begun paying closer attention to details.

Not that they always follow the advice of their consultants.

"A technical adviser explains the way it really is, then a director will do as he damn well pleases. . . . You have to accept it and go about your business," said Snow. "They're not making a documentary."

Even so, how is it possible that, in "Air Force One," Kazakhstan rebels -- posing as journalists -- actually are able to fool a fingerprint analyzing device and capture the president's aircraft?

"No idea," Snow replies. "It was just one of those Hollywood leaps. There was a rogue agent involved, so he might have programmed it to accept their fingerprints. It's not explained."

Likewise, in "Murder at 1600," which he also consulted on, Snow remains baffled by the way the script managed to confuse law-enforcement jurisdictions after a young woman is killed in the White House.

Why bother having a technical adviser when much of their advice may be ignored?

"Even when the story line is way off base, most directors still want to have as many technical things as accurate as they can, so it gives credence to the film," Snow says. "That's why they use people like me."

In fact, he added, "Air Force One" is so believable in most technical respects that he was inspired to take pictures of the exterior and interior of the president's plane to show to his pals in the agency.

"The plane was built so accurately and done so well, I took the photos back to the guys on the detail and said, `Look at this,' " he recalled. "It was built on giant gimbals, so it could re-create all the gyrations in the air. That plane was built to scale from plans they got from Boeing, and the rooms inside were exact.

"The trouble is, how many people have actually been on Air Force One and know what it really looks like?"

Apparently that didn't matter much to director Wolfgang Petersen, who first worked with Snow on "In the Line of Fire" and is known to be fastidious about details.

"Actually, Harrison Ford, production designer William Sandrell and Wolfgang got to go on Air Force One," said Jonathan Shestack, a producer of Columbia Pictures' action-thriller, which opened Friday and stars Ford as the president and Glenn Close as the vice president. "They didn't get to go into the MCC (Mission Communication Center) or into the belly of the plane, but they got to go on the main deck. They also studied press footage of it, as well as a documentary and still photographs from people who travel with the president.

"People have subsequently said -- in that spooky, secret CIA way -- `I can't begin to tell you how accurate this thing is. I don't want to be quoted, but you almost got it all right.' "

President Clinton had given his permission for the filmmakers to tour the refitted 747 -- which was parked in Wyoming, during his vacation -- and all four branches of the military provided their technical expertise and equipment, including six F-15 fighters. Still, the filmmakers couldn't resist adding a few of their own touches.

Perhaps the greatest leap made by the filmmakers is the concept behind an airborne escape device to be used by the president in the case of an extreme emergency. Hiding behind a smile, Snow refused to say whether Petersen's imagination had hit a bull's-eye.

"We never comment on security details," he allowed. (Snow says the agents' own code of honor prohibits them from discussing specifics of security, even after retirement.)

Besides "In the Line of Fire" and this year's other White House dramas, Snow has consulted on "First Kid," "The American President" and "Contact" ("Some work around the edges, when they cut to the president," he says). He's also helping on the upcoming "Deep Impact," "White House One," "Wildfire" and an untitled DreamWorks film about counterfeiting.